Sunlight.
That was the first thing that registered. Not the gentle, filtered light of my blackout curtains in the city, but a sharp, intrusive blade of morning sun slicing through a gap in the rustic barn’s drapes.
It hit my eyelids, pulling me from the deepest, most dreamless sleep I’d had in a decade.
The second thing was the warmth. A solid, human warmth pressed against my back, a heavy arm draped possessively over my waist.
The third was the scent. Stale whiskey, woodsmoke, and a musky, masculine scent that was achingly familiar.
My eyes snapped open.
The ceiling was wrong. Rough-hewn wooden beams instead of smooth white plaster. The blanket tangled around my legs was a coarse, scratchy wool, not my Egyptian cotton duvet. And the man snoring softly behind me…
Oh, god.
The first thing I registered was the light. It was a pale, apologetic gray, filtering through the thin curtains of the barn’s loft and painting a stripe across a bare chest.
My chest. No, not mine. His.
Rhys.
The second thing I registered was the scent. Whiskey, musk, and sleep, a heady, masculine combination that was soaked into the sheets, into my hair, into the very air I was breathing.
My body hummed with a low-level thrum of satisfaction so deep it was almost painful. Every muscle ached with a delicious, well-used soreness. My skin tingled where the rough scrape of his stubble had raked across it. Last night wasn’t a dream. It was a brand seared into my memory.
I turned my head slowly on the pillow. He was still asleep, lying on his stomach, one arm thrown over his head and the other slung low across my waist, possessive even in unconsciousness. The dense muscle of his back flexed with each steady breath.
A giddy, terrifying warmth bloomed in my chest. For one stupid, delirious second, I let myself sink into it. This felt… right. More right than anything had felt in years. The way he’d looked at me, like he was seeing past the spreadsheets, right down to the messy, chaotic woman I kept locked away.
Then reality, cold and sharp as a shard of glass, sliced through the haze.
*Marcus.*
The name was a physical blow. Marcus, my ex, the man I was still hopelessly tangled up with. Marcus, the groom.
And Rhys. Rhys was his best man. And my client’s brother.
A wave of nausea churned in my stomach, violent and immediate. What had I done. My rules—the carefully constructed set of principles I lived by to avoid this exact kind of catastrophic mess—lay in smoking ruins around me.
With a surge of adrenaline, I shoved myself free and scrambled out of bed, grabbing the first piece of clothing I could find—his button-down shirt from the floor. It smelled of him, a fresh torture. As I fumbled with the buttons, my hands shaking, his voice, thick with sleep, cut through the silence.
“Leaving so soon. I was hoping for a repeat performance. ”
I froze, my back to him. I could feel his eyes on me. I didn’t have to turn around to know his expression would be laced with that infuriating, lazy smirk.
“I have to go,” I said, my voice tight and unfamiliar.
The bedsprings creaked as he shifted. “Ava. Turn around. ”
It wasn’t a request. Taking a shaky breath, I did as he said. He was sitting up now, the sheet pooled at his waist, his hair a dark mess, his eyes a startling, clear grey in the morning light. The smirk was gone. In its place was a look of quiet intensity that made my stomach clench.
“This… last night…” I started, gesturing vaguely at the bed, at him, at the wreckage of my own making. “It was a mistake. ”
A flicker of something—raw, wounded—crossed his face before being wiped clean, replaced by a mask of cool indifference. He leaned back on his elbows, the picture of casual disregard. “Really. Felt pretty damn intentional to me. Several times, in fact. ”
Heat flooded my cheeks. “You know what I mean. This can’t happen again. It can never, ever happen again. ”
He raised a single, sardonic eyebrow. “Bit dramatic, don’t you think. It was just sex. ”
“No, it wasn’t,” I snapped, the words out before I could stop them. “And that’s the problem. You’re Marcus’s best man. I’m… I’m his planner. This is an impossible, insane situation. ”
“Only a situation if we make it one,” he said, his voice hardening, the sarcastic armor clicking firmly into place. “So what’s the play here. We pretend we didn’t just spend eight hours tearing this room apart. We go back to trading witty insults over canapés?”
The casual cruelty of his words was a relief. It was easier to fight him than to face the terrifying tenderness I’d felt waking up in his arms.
“Yes,” I said, lifting my chin. “That’s exactly the play. Last night was a lapse in judgment. Fueled by whiskey and… stress. It meant nothing. ”
The lie tasted like acid on my tongue. It had meant everything.
Rhys watched me for a long, silent moment.
A muscle jumped in his jaw. He swung his legs out of bed, completely unselfconscious in his nakedness, and started pulling on his jeans. The sight of his lean hips and the sharp line of his V-taper was a fresh assault on my resolve.
“Got it,” he said, his voice clipped and devoid of emotion as he zipped his fly. “One-time-only-shit-show. My lips are sealed. ” He grabbed his t-shirt from a chair and pulled it over his head, the motion sharp and angry. When he looked at me again, his face was a blank slate.
“Your secret’s safe with me, princess. Wouldn’t want to mess up your perfect little life. ”
He walked past me and into the small bathroom, shutting the door with a quiet, definitive click that echoed the sound of my heart slamming against my ribs.